Make ahead Wheat Berry Salad

This salad is one of my top 10 favorite recipes.  The whole wheat kernel base is layered with artichokes, bitter greens, peppers and olives and finished with the classically Greek lemon-olive oil-feta flavor party.  Once you've got the wheat berries prepared, it goes together quickly and only gets better over the course of a couple days in the fridge...read: it *likes* to be made ahead and the leftovers are delicious!  It can stand to be out of the fridge for awhile (and tastes better served at room temp anyway) so it's suitable for picnics or dinner at your kids' Little League games. 

It's also a recipe that I never quite make the same way twice...it depends on what I have on hand and how willing I am to have 1/2 a can of something hanging around after I finish the recipe.  It's not so much a recipe anymore as guidelines :D  Originally, it was a recipe from the Washington Post food section.  They recommended serving this as a side dish with grilled fish or chicken, but I serve it most often as a vegetarian main dish.

Wheat berries

Wheat berries are the whole kernel of wheat, what comes off the plant before it gets flattened into cereal or ground into flour.  When cooked, the  individual kernels are chewy and toothsome.  They pop between your teeth like caviar or grapes.  They have a nutty, grainy flavor and make a much more flavorful salad base than rice (the usual grain-and-vegetable salad suspect) in my opinion.

Top Row: Red bell pepper, black olives, radicchio
Middle Row: Feta, chickpeas, lemon
Bottom Row: Radicchio, cherry tomatoes, artichokes

Cooking the wheat berries is a lot like cooking dry beans.  Some folks say they can be cooked without soaking first, but I prefer the results from soaking then cooking.  You can do either the overnight soak, then cook them, or do a "quick soak"...just like for beans!  Here is how I put together this salad last night for dinner tonight...I put the wheat berries in a saucepan covered with 1" of water and brought it to a boil.  I boiled for 2 minutes, then turned off the heat and covered the pan.  I let them stand for 1 hour (this is the "quick soak" method) while we put the kids to bed.  Then I drained them, rinsed them, covered them again with water, brought to a boil, reduced the heat, covered and simmered for 50 minutes while I zoned out and watched TV.  Drain.  Ta-dah!  Cooked wheat berries!  I measured and chopped the remaining ingredients this morning, but I could have done that while the wheat berries were cooking for 100% Dinner Done Yesterday ;)

This recipe lends itself to tweaking...use regular black olives or the fancy marinated olive bar ones, use fresh red bell pepper or roasted red pepper, use radicchio or arugula or a handful of salad from a bag of spring mix, whatever you have on hand!

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Doomsday Chicken and Peppers

Doomsday Chicken n Peppers with rice and bok choy salad

I misread a blog post title here and I can't get the idea of Doomsday Peppers out of my mind now LOL  Red, orange and yellow peppers are on big sale at my grocery store this week, so I am taking advantage!

Actually, if you had to throw together dinner quickly b/c the world was about to end, this might the recipe for you ;)  I'm prepping it ahead b/c I am doing Big Things later today but the prep is so quick that you could easily do this at the last minute without turning a hair.  You could freeze this as a kit as well since you cook the peppers and onions into a soft, chunky, peperonata sauce anyway so the fact that they loose their crisp in the freezer isn't an issue.

The red-yellow family of peppers is certainly attractive and highly nutritious with all those colors, but if you'd prefer, you certainly can use green peppers.  If you do have an abundance of inexpensive colored bell peppers available, you can roast them and freeze them in bulk or incorporate some of these recipes into your weekly menu:

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Chicken Vegetable Croissant Loaf

Another recipe from my new cookbook, Fresh from the Farmer's Market.  I've fiddled just a bit with the recipe to make it a bit more svelte.  The OR calls for mayo, and I'm substituting light sour cream for a lot less fat and fewer calories.  I also skew the ratio of vegetables to chicken more heavily in the vegetable direction than the OR. 

Chicken Croissant Loaf with swiss chard

You can prep this dish ahead in a variety of ways.  Prepare the filling and fridge or freeze it (another benefit of using sour cream over mayo...mayo breaks badly in the freezer) separately from the dough, assembling and baking at the last minute.  You can also assemble the loaf up to the point of brushing the top with egg white and sprinkling with almonds and fridge it, covered in plastic wrap, until ready to bake.  I don't see any reason you couldn't freeze the assembled loaf, but I've not actually tried doing it so that is merely speculation.  If you fridge or freeze prior to baking, transfer the parchment paper and loaf to a room temp baking sheet rather than baking on the chilly sheet on which you stored/thawed the loaf.  You could also bake this off and reheat at 350F for 15 minutes or so.

A note on the croissant/crescent roll dough.  If you're a fantastic baker, by all means, make your own croissant dough.  Or another type of bread dough.  I buy 2 tubes of crescent rolls at the grocery store.  I have occasionally seen tubes of unperforated crescent roll dough...if you find that product, it's perfect for this recipe.  Otherwise you'll need to smoosh the seams on the unrolled crescent rolls to form a more-or-less solid sheet of pastry.

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Potato Chip Frittata

Fast.  Uses the crumbly bits left at the bottom of the potato chip bag.  No prep required.  REALLY fast.  Apparently quite close to an authentic Spanish potato frittata (according to the Food and Wine recipe from which this is adapted).  Really, really, really fast.

We walked in the door tonight at quarter of six and I had dinner on the table at 6:05.  No prep-ahead, unless you count having already eaten 12 oz. of a 14 oz. bag of sour cream and onion chips.  I had ham leftover from breakfast that needed chopped, and I used jarred diced pimiento...if you use home-roasted peppers, that part will take you a bit longer.  I served this frittata with bagged salad greens and sliced fruit.

Measure your potato chip bits by weight rather than volume (I screw up so you don't have to).  Two single-serving bags work, or about 2 oz. of leftover potato chip bits.  It's about 2 cups of crushed chips, but it's easy to over-crush wind up with WAY too much potato.

Marjoram is my favorite herb with eggs, but you can leave it out or substitute something else if you want.

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Hungarian Stuffed Peppers

The thing that makes these peppers stand out from all the other stuffed peppers in the world is the paprika...it's in the meat, it's in the gravy, it's in the smell that permeates the house while you're baking this dish. 

The pepper-and-paprika infused gravy is built on an intensely flavorful stock and finished in the original recipe (Frugal Gourmet's Immigrant Ancestors) with a "beurre manié" of flour and sour cream.  Since I've never had good things come of freezing sour cream, I use buttermilk inside for a freezer-friendly version.  Just be sure when you add the buttermilk-flour slurry to whisk constantly and pour slowly to avoid lumps.

Since this does take a little prep work, it's worth it to make a LOT and freeze these puppies up.  Especially if you hit a good sale on bell peppers at your market.  Doubling this recipe is no problem, just freeze the peppers in the number of portions you want with appropriate division of the gravy stock and flour-buttermilk mixture.

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Roasted Red Pepper Lasagne

This is a recipe liberally adapted from a recipe published in the Washington Post a million years ago for "Subanik", a traditional Costa Rican dish of meats simmered in a spicy red pepper sauce and served over rice.  Many of the ingredients are the same, but I've layered the Latin American flavors onto the Italian lasagne structure. 

You can shorten up your work time by buying red pepper spaghetti sauce (many brands have a "roasted red pepper" flavor), but if you were playing Mystery Dish at home and roasted your red peppers already, now's the time to pull them out of the freezer.

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Roasted red peppers: Roasting (or grilling or broiling)

If you're playing "Mystery Dish" with me at home and you've bought some on-sale red bell peppers, it's time to roast them! 

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Roasted red peppers

For those playing at home, I have plans for a dish with a roasted red pepper sauce.  Right now, two of the major grocery stores in my area are running sales on red peppers so I am going to stock up, roast them, peel them and freeze them to use in that sauce later.  Just cuz you aren't going to do all the steps now for the final product doesn't mean you can't take advantage of seasonal produce sales! 

If you want to play Mystery Dish, today's step is buy 5 red peppers.  Pin It